Deciphering Internet hype versus reality – the wonderful world of widgets and Twitter

Wed, October 01, 2008

Related Topics : Twitter, Widget

Turn on the news, sit in marketing meetings, read advertising publications – there is a crop of buzz words that have now infiltrated marketing conversations that you have all probably heard by now. While many will sound remarkably sexy, I can assure you that there is a good chance that many of these new ‘buzzy’ technologies are all not right for you.

For the sake of this article, I’ll focus on the two items that come up (or have been rapidly coming up) for many of our clients as of late – widgets and Twitter. Both have great marketing potential if used correctly – but, at the same time, both could be a complete waste of time and money. Let’s analyze.

Let’s start with widgets which, in a nutshell, are little snippets of code that we can put on our personal web pages, Facebook pages, etc. that allow us to view and interact with content without having to visit the official site. They are typically music players, news feeds, games, etc. that you will see on your friends Facebook, Myspace pages. Truth is, the possibilities are endless with widgets but to be honest, I hate even saying the word. It’s SO over used now – and the reality is that the concept of widgets has been around for a long time in other forms. The emergence of social nets and consumers blogging has simply opened up their distribution. I guess that’s not what’s important – what IS important is “does your brand need a widget?”

To answer ‘YES’ to this question, you would need to give consumers both a reason to want to use your widget and you need to make sure you have a distribution channel and enough prospects that will actually use it. The content should be new, refreshed often (assuming it's not a game of some kind) and be something that is digestible in the place that the widget lives. Second, to do a widget right, there is cost to developing it – so you should make sure you have the right content, audience and distribution channel to make sure it gets used or it really is not worth the time.

The bigger trend we all need to be watching which I promise you will not change is content distribution. Widgets are just a small sampling of what is to come – that consumers expect to receive information and interact with your brand through the distribution channels of their choice. Widgets are just one channel for you to choose from.

Next up, Twitter which is a service that allows users to send and read others updates primarily by mobile phone but also via web, RSS, IM, email or other applications. Think micro-blogging meets social networking (ok, that may be more confusing). Senator Obama is sending ‘tweets’ like ‘In Detroit, MI. At a Change We Need rally. Watch it live at XYZ’.  He is using it to keep his supporters informed of key campaign events. He has 92,248 followers on Twitter. McCain has about 2,000 or so – I don’t think his campaign is tapping into this channel enough as politics really is a great fit for Twitter.

So, the presidential candidates are using it, does your brand need to be doing Twitter?

My gut says Twitter will get bought soon or will have very tough competition. I have an account and it’s totally useful… but, as far as I can tell, totally replaceable when one of the big guns steps in to take it over {Facebook should buy them!}! For now though, is it worth doing? Again, you have to ask “WHY?” Two reasons why I would use Twitter – first, you have a voice/person/opinion that your target market really cares about listening to OR you have information that has to or should be delivered in real-time to groups of people. You can do a lot of what Twitter offers from a technology standpoint through your own or shared mobile short code which is often what we do for our clients – the upside to that is you get to keep control of the data and the costs are pretty minimal. We’ve done ‘live from the red carpet’ mobile campaigns and backstage texting with cast members in real-time and I can say that we have seen both successes and failures. Sure enough, the one’s that succeeded had both a cast that fans adored and were the hottest show on the planet at that time – we could have interacted with fans by messenger pigeon and they still would have participated.

In the end, use Twitter if you can answer the “WHY?” question. Fair warning though - time is money and keeping content fresh and interesting takes time.

So that’s my two cents – let me stress that I’m not saying don’t use these technologies. I’m simply saying don’t feel like you have to just because ‘everyone else is doing it’.

There are plenty of other buzz words swirling and the best way to always protect yourself is to ask the simple question ‘WHY would consumers do what we are asking them to do?’ and ‘Is it worth the expense (including time) to invest in it?’

Here’s a pretty fun article on some other buzz words you should keep an eye on.

Read on.